Your favorite OS for developing for maemo and which one for other things, and what would be the ideal situation?

Warning, long. Executive summary can be found below from bold text, if you don’t want to read everything, just read the bold text

There was a comment in another my blog post that developers could develop “directly” from Windows with cross-platform high level interpreted languages which are run on virtual machines. What this “directly” means, could someone please clarify it to me. Because I work directly from Linux and MacOS X and developing from Windows would not be that “direct” for me. I would like to understand what “directly from some operating system N.N.” means. From which operating system are you working “directly” and from which “indirectly” and please tell me why you specifically need that operating system to do your stuff or have you thought about it, what is the reasoning behind for desiring using e.g. Windows.

I can start by myself - what we have at home:
- I have several computers, which run Linux, we have different distributions in use, most of them are Ubuntu. My latest is Ubuntu Hardy on a laptop, our living room PC has Ubuntu Feisty and file server is to my understanding also Feisty. Our web server is a bit outdated and is going to be replaced soon with a Ubuntu installation. Then we have a MacBook running OS X Leopard.

What I am using on which computer:
- The hardy laptop is primarily for maemo development (scratchbox etc.) + office stuff (openoffice.org). This one is running Ubuntu Hardy.
- The living room PC is for browsing, videos, music, flight simulation (running the Linux-version of X-Plane 9 simulator), photos, photo editing, office stuff, email, development etc. This one is running Ubuntu Feisty.
- The MacBook is primarily for editing high definition videos (from our HD camcorder) and making music and organizing photos for our iPod touch. It also serves as a way to buy music for the iPod touch, yes, I am using iTunes. The Mac also downloads latest cool podcasts I follow (like Armin van Buuren’s State of Trance and DJ Tiesto’c Clublife) and they get automatically synced to the iPod. I also have the NeoOffice installed, so I can edit OpenOffice.org documents with it. I have also the MacOS X development stuff installed on it (Xcode etc.) and I have been doing the aircraft design software with it. Obviously the Mac is running MacOS X Leopard.
- The file server serves two purposes, it is a home theater PC and also a file share (photos, music, videos etc.) for the other computers in the household. That is running Ubuntu Feisty.
- Then we have the web server. Not much to say about it. It a is ancient Redhat until it gets replaced (hopefully soon).
- And of course for additional gaming (other than X-plane which runs on Linux and Mac) and Blu-Ray and DVD playback in the home theater, we have the PS3.
- And of course we have a lots of multimedia computers - N800s, N810s, even couple of 770s around. I recently got my own personal N810 from work and I love it (I mean own, not a unit owned by the company like many of the other units). And unlike the iPod touch, I can sync it with any computer in the household. And of course, all of those machines are running Debian Linux.
- And of course, we have the CNC machine controller computer. That is a VIA epia and running Ubuntu in diskless setting (boots from flash card). That is only the controller, the actual CNC machine is pretty much lacking so far. That one is running Ubuntu Feisty and LinuxCNC on top of that.

That’s it pretty much. The other computers are disconnected because they are outdated and what not. No Windows.
How I would like it to be instead? I think I wouldn’t want to change anything. I am quite happy with my Linux-based setup and only thing I might like to have more would be a Mac Pro with many many many cores, for running Logic 8, Garage Band, and iMovie 08 (and of course Audacity for mastering). For developing to maemo, Linux is perfectly fine in my case, I like to use the Linux machine for development, as it is least problematic for that, e.g. I have no trouble of finding good text editor for programming etc. (I prefer the KDE’s Kate editor over e.g. the editor in Xcode IDE on Mac (no I don’t use vi, vim, etc. and I avoid also emacs (CTRL-X+CTRL-C stuff is not hardwired into my brain, I got into PC/Linux stuff from Amiga, and I never got used to Emacs commands on “text mode era” because I never lived the text mode era (except with a Specravideo MSX that I had before the Amiga)) if I can use an editor which fits into the graphical desktop I am running), I have got used to it, it has all the functions I need and it represents the code with syntax highlighting, has code folding etc. which is pretty handy when handling large code files) I can get everything I need from Ubuntu repository with no hassle and everything works out of the box pretty much and then my experience has been that the maemo SDK installs trouble free on the Ubuntu.

Please tell me your configuration (for development e.g. for maemo) and what is the reasoning behind and also maybe you could say that if you don’t like your current configuration, how would you like to prefer it to be instead (e.g. for maemo development). E.g. I love Beos because… or I want to use blahblah OS because of … but can’t because of … The comments area is again open for your comments. I am quite happy with the activity in the language question topic, so I would be grateful if you keep me posted again, it is very interesting to hear from you.